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1 Jul 2014

Making politics a joke

There's been a theme developing over recent years whereby government MP's, particularly those from the National party, have been treating question time as some sort of joke!

This isn't just detrimental to our democratic process because no proper answers are being provided to important questions; it also brings the House of Representatives into disrepute.

In many regards some of the behaviour can be excused, being that many National MP's are simply taking their cues from the PM. Being the ringleader John Key actively encourages others to misbehave, which might gratify his rather over-inflated ego, but it does nothing to promote good relations across the house.

Here's one particular display of contempt for the house by John Key from today's question time.

With such arrogant behaviour regularly on display doing nothing to raise public opinion of politicians, it’s little wonder that they languish at the bottom of most trusted profession lists. In 2013 a Reader's Digest survey for instance placed them at 46 out of 50, right next to sex workers. That's a rating our politicians, instead of trivializing the sanctity of parliament, should be doing all in their power to change.

However there doesn't seem to be any impetus to remedy such bad behaviour and subsequently the general public's low opinion of politicians. Couple that dysfunction with an ineffective speaker in the form of David Carter, who is unable or unwilling to ensure there's an acceptable standard of behaviour, and we have a display of baseless bravado from National MP's more suited to the kindergarten schoolyard.